It always feels like some form of VR tech comes out with some sort of fanfare and with a promise it will take over the world, but it never does.
Printer drivers.
Apparently sending data serially at glacial speeds is impossible.
The LaserJet 4P driver was the GOAT. It worked on every HP printer for years. It’s been all downhill since.
“Smart” TVs. Somehow they have replaced normal televisions despite being barely usable, laggy, DRM infested garbage.
Man, I haven’t really faced this yet. My flat screen is a really old Panasonic plasma and it is"barely" smart. It came with a few apps on it. I ignore them and use it as a dumb monitor, running everything through my receiver instead. When it dies, I don’t know what I’ll do.
You can disconnect them from the WiFi and block their ability to connect and then use a third party device for any apps you want.
I recently bought a TV on behalf of a friend( because it was cheaper at Costco) and when we got it to his house and connected it, it asked him to give up his privacy like 11 times. If he said no, would it still have worked?
Mine had the ability to turn of WiFi in settings. I provided it no real information, didn’t create and account, and didn’t use their app or interface.
It was a Samsung. YMMV with other brands.
They’re more expensive, but check out commercial displays. They’re basically just big “dumb” TVs for businesses to display menus and whatnot, usually with a single HDMI and no sound, but those limitations can easily be bypassed with a stereo receiver.
Only if you use it as a smart tv - I just never signed the user agreements, and now have a big TV with OLED. I switch to the source I want - off I go. Television can still just be television!
The concept confuses and infuriates me. I’m just going to stick a game console or Blu-ray player on it, but you can’t buy a TV these days that doesn’t have a bloated “smart” interface. The solution, for me at least, is a computer monitor. I don’t need or want a very large screen, and a monitor does exactly one thing, and that’s show me what I’ve plugged into it.
you can buy business-grade stuff without all the spyware shit, it’s just much more expensive
Probably not top ten of mind, but Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) has been trotted out by the fossil fuel industry for a generation as a panacea for carbon emissions, in order to prevent any real legislation limiting the combustion of hydrocarbons.
Doesn’t sound like it failed at its purpose in that case
Encryption with safe, unexploitable backdoors.
“unexploitable backdoor” is a contradiction.
I’m going to get downvoted for this
Open source has its place, but the FOSS community needs to wake up to the fact that documentation, UX, ergonomics, and (especially) accessibility aren’t just nice-to-haves. Every year has been “The Year of the Linux Desktop™” but it never takes off, and it never will until more people who aren’t developers get involved.
While you generally have a point, the year of the linux desktop is not hindered by that. Distributions like Linux Mint, Ubuntu and the like are just as easy to install as Windows, the desktop environments preinstalled on them work very good and the software is more than sufficient for like 70% to 80% of people (not counting anything, that you cannot install with a single click from the app store/software center of the distribution.
Though Linux is not the default. Windows is paying big time money to be the default. So why would “normal people” switch? Hell, most people will just stop messaging people instead of installing a different messenger on their phone. Installing a different OS on your PC/Notebook is a way bigger step than that.
So probably we won’t get the “Year of the Linux Desktop”, unless someone outpays Microsoft for quite some time, or unless microsoft and Windows implode by themselves (not likely either)
ai
I’ll go against the grain and say literally all of it. Every piece of technology that exists is a compromise between what the designer wants to do and the constraints of what is practical or possible to actually pull off. Therefore, all technology “fails” on at least some metric the designer would like it to achieve. Technology is all about improvement and working with imperfection. If we don’t keep trying to make things better, then innovation stops. With your example of VR, I’d say that after having seen multiple versions of VR in my lifetime, the one that we have now is way more successful and impactful, especially in commercial uses rather than consumer products. Engineers can now tour facilities before they are built with VR headsets to see design flaws that they might not have seen just with a traditional model review, for example. Furthermore, what we have now is just an iteration on what we had before. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum, people take what came before, look at what worked and what didn’t, and what could be fixed with other technologies that have developed in the meantime. That’s the iteration process.
Iteration isn’t a claim that the predecessor was a failure though, you iterate on the successes of the prior generation. It used to be that technology advanced so rapidly that the cutting edge became obsolete in a matter of a few years, but for that time it was a success.
I think there’s also an assumption of design philosophy here. One designer might put many generalized requirements into their design, then you get Google glasses, AI, NFTs and so on. This means everything is a failure because it couldn’t achieve the requirements. Others may pick a small set of very specific requirements, then you get the iPhone or a Toyota hilux. These are massive successes because they had cohesion in the idea and planned as to about compromise.
Since at least 1970, every decade there seems to be a, “The VR take over is here!” fad and it falls flat every time.
Those VR rollercoaster shuttle rides in malls during the 1980s and early 1990s, thinking that is the future, oh boy, we were all so silly.
The big one would be viable nuclear fusion, we’ve been trying to figure it out and spending money on it for like 80 years now.
That being said, there’s actually a lot of verified progress on it lately by reputable organizations and international teams.
It’s only 30 years away!
Just like it was 30 years ago.
Ah, the so called Fusion Constant.
In its defence, that assumed it was properly funded. Its actual funding was very limited.
I believe most of the critical problems have been solved. The only major one left is keeping the reactor walls stable. They have a tendency to transmute, which causes multiple problems.
As far as i know they can get it working in small scale, in labs
Essentially yes, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_power#2020s
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/helion-begins-work-on-fusion-power-plant One of the commercial entities did start building a plant last year, not particularly large (only 50 MW) with an agreement to power a Microsoft datacenter, and billions in funding from government and private sources.
Hard to tell for real though because the level of secrecy around this is insanity and the US Military is heavily involved in not just this, but pretty much every similar organization.
I would not be surprised if we hear nothing, or see them “failing”, even if some of these designs are fully functional already.
AI, Mass Surveillance and privatization of services people need to live and National security technology
Twitter/X. It is not a free speech platform. Give it up and move on to something else. Stop supporting these billionaires and stop giving them your time.
Social media as a whole, honestly. Way back in 2014 I read an article about the “social media cycle” (not their words IIRC). Basically, a new platform gets popular with teens and college-age kids, then their parents join, then the kids have to move to something else because they don’t want to be on the same platform as their parents. I could be misremembering. It was a comparison between Facebook and Snapchat.
Anyway, the Fediverse helps, but since fedi platforms are largely clones of their normie counterparts (Lemmy/PieFed = reddit, Mastodon = Twitter, PeerTube = YouTube) they inherit many of the same problems. I know I bring this up a lot, but on these platforms, content is the focus, but on traditional forums, people are the focus.
Flying cars.
If you mean flying cars that will replace regular cars, I don’t think anyone ever tried it really. There have been prototype cars with wings but no one took that seriously. More recently what everyone keeps trying is drones as taxis but I hope that fails because I don’t want that noise pollution.
Printers.
I think there is an open source printer being created. Potentially has the chance at being the only printer that isn’t a pile of shit.
I’m sceptical any open source printer wouldn’t run into trouble regarding patents.
Are patents region specific? Could they just ignore the US market for example.
I’ve seen that project. Complete radio silence since the announcement and zero path to releasing anything.
It really sucks.
Ahh that is a shame
Too true :(
AI
Cinema movies in 3D with the stupid glasses.
